After moving south of the border for his second novel (The Geography of Desire, 1989), Boswell heads back home to take a leisurely look at a divided American family (the same territory as in Crooked Hearts, 1987). It's 1971. Stephen and Angela Landis, newlyweds from suburban Chicago, are buying a farm in Iowa. They are in ecstasy over their purchase, boundlessly confident in their young love. Why, then, six years later, does Angela end the ``mystery ride'' of their marriage, splitting for California with their little girl Dulcie? The question will haunt both of them, for neither will find such good loving again, even though Angela has a happy second marriage to theatrical agent Quin Vorda, an affectionate if unfaithful spouse. The breakup will also spell trouble for Dulcie, who in 1987 (when most of the story is set) has become such a difficult teenager that Angela sends her back to the Iowa farm for the summer. Dulcie is just as hostile with Stephen, even killing one of his cows; and though other characters are rearranging their lives (Stephen's new woman, Leah, moves to the farm with her daughter, Roxanne, another 15-year-old who will be made pregnant by the born- again neighbor's son), Dulcie upstages them all—until her friend Rox's pregnancy goes awry and she is shocked into righteousness. Her long scream of pain, however, distracts us from that central question; the answer, evidently, is that Angela split when the farm, originally a larky youthful experiment, became a prison, a denial of possibilities. People change—the conclusion is as banal as that. And because Stephen and Angela are somewhat dull, this becomes one of those novels that's liveliest at its edges, where the minor characters act up a storm.
Pub Date: Jan. 26, 1993
ISBN: 0-679-41292-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1992
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
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